“I'm serious,” Erin said. “It's such a refuge. I wish I had something like this.”
The word
refuge
put Becca's trouble antennae on high alert. She couldn't help remembering her own thoughts about the warehouse during her marriage. Was Erin in some kind of distress? Erin's colonial house was the pride of her life. The place she wanted to raise a family, when she and Bob finally started one.
Pam flashed a quick, raised-brow glance at Becca before focusing on Erin again. “You have a refuge. It's called your house.”
Erin shrugged. “Yeah, but . . .”
Becca poured Erin a glass of wine. “Is something wrong?”
Erin took a long time weighing the question before answering. “Probably not.”
“
Probably
not?” Pam repeated.
“It's Bob.” Erin bit her lip. “I think he's having an affair.”
The statement sucked air out of the room.
“There's this woman at work,” Erin said in a rush. “You knowâthe old story. A few months ago, I found an Ann Taylor jacket in the backseat of his car. Bland business attire, not anything I'd wear. He told me that a colleague must have left it there one day after they'd gone out to lunch.”
“Sounds reasonable,” Becca said.
Erin nodded. “That's what I thought at the time. No big deal, right? But then, a week later, I walked into Bob's study without knocking, and the minute he saw me, he slammed his computer shutâlike he was terrified I would see what he was doing. He saw me and then
thunk!
MacBook closed.”
“Hmph.” Pam tapped her fingers, thinking. “Maybe he was looking at porn.”
Erin dismissed the possibility with a wave. “Oh, Bob knows I don't care about his porn thing.”
Miraculously, Becca and Pam avoided gawping at each other.
Bob has a porn thing?
“Sure he doesn't have a secret life as a spy?” Becca asked, grasping for any other explanation for his secrecy, and also to lighten the grim mood. After all . . . a jacket, an incident with the computer . . . these didn't necessarily add up to infidelity.
“That actually crossed my mind,” Erin said. “But I don't think he'd be good at it. He can't even hide what he's up to when he's all the way across the country.”
“I forgot.” Bob was supposed to be gone for most of the month. “But maybe it's good that he's away right now,” Becca said.
“If he's not in the office, he's not around Ann Taylor,” Pam pointed out.
“That's what I hoped,” Erin said. “But things have been weird since he left. He never calls me.”
“You haven't talked to him since he left?” Pam asked.
“I have, but I call him. Every time.”
Becca let out a breath. This was sounding less like a sordid, other-woman scenario and more like a typical long-distance relationship problem.
“Wouldn't you expect your husband to call you?” Erin glanced over her wineglass at both of them.
“Don't ask me,” Pam said. “Everything I know about marriage, I've learned from
Cosmo
and TV. So, basically, all couples are doomed . . . unless you memorize infinite lists of ten things to keep your man happy in the sack.”
Becca shot her a look.
Way to put her fears at rest, Pam.
Erin seemed too absorbed in her own thoughts to notice. “This morning I called Bob, and Ann Taylor answered his phone. âThis is Nicole,' she said. Very brusque and businessy. I thought I had the wrong number. I said, âI'm trying to reach Bob.' There was a long silence, and then the woman said, âOhâthis is so weird. I must have picked up his phone by mistake.' ”
Erin watched them for their reactions. Becca tried to keep her expression neutral, but Pam let out a groan. “Wonder how
that
happened!”
“It might be the truth.” Becca felt skeptical, but she didn't want to throw fuel on Erin's smoldering suspicions. “She obviously was at work, right? She answered the phone in a businesslike way, you said.”
“But when would the phones have gotten switched?” Erin asked. “How? Except maybe if they'd both left their phones outâsay, on a table in a hotel roomâand picked up the wrong ones in the morning when they were rushing out the door.”
Becca frowned. “There could be other ways . . .”
“Plus, it's Nicole.” Erin took another slug of wine. Becca made a mental note to stop after one bottle was consumed. “Bob talks about Nicole all the timeâabout how brilliant she is. They both went to MIT, a detail that's come up about a hundred times. Natch. He loves to remind me that I'm a college dropout, and make cracks about how I don't have a profession.”
Becca hated Bob, but she tried not to allow her feelings against Despicable He to run amok. “But maybe it's not”â
an affair
sounded so soap operaâish, and Erin's thoughts seemed to be melodramatic enough alreadyâ“serious. Maybe he just thinks she's smart and an asset to his team.”
“Of course she's an asset,” Erin said, finishing off her glass of wine as if she were swallowing down the last sip of bitterness. “She's brilliant and beautiful. Probably talented in all sorts of ways.”
“So? You're beautiful, too,” Becca said. “And smart.”
Erin buried her head in her hands. “I wasn't smart enough not to marry some guy who was going to run off with the first coworker who smiled at him. I wasn't smart enough to try to make something of my life so I wouldn't feel so lost now.”
“Enough with the self-loathing,” Pam said. “
You're
not the problemâit's what Bob's up to that's causing trouble. We need to do a house search for serious evidence. Do you know his passwords?”
Becca shook her head. “No, no. You can't go snooping like that.”
Pam blinked at her. “How would you do it?”
“I wouldn't snoop at all. It's not right. How would you feel if someone dug through all your files and stuff? If Bob hasn't done anything and then he finds out that Erin's been spying on him, she's going to come off as a paranoid nut wife.”
“Well, if you're going to be all ethical . . .” Pam took a sip of wine and turned back to Erin. “Is Nicole married?”
Erin shrugged. “I can't remember.”
“We should find that out, at least,” Pam said.
Becca shook her head. “The other womanâand we don't even know if she is that, in the lurid senseâdoesn't matter. Neither does her marital status. The person who matters to Erin is Bob, because he
is
married.”
Erin bit her lip, considering. “No, I don't think that matters so much. At least, not to him.”
Becca planted her hands on her hips. “Why wouldn't it matter that Bob swore a vow to love you till death do you part?”
“Because he made that exact same vow to someone before me.” Erin smiled miserably. “And then I came along.”
Chapter 6
Nicole arrived home late the next Friday night for a weekend visit and proceeded to collapse. She slept in Saturday morning while Matthew and Olivia worked like elves in the kitchen, trying not to make too much noise. Olivia insisted that her mother's homecoming, however temporary, called for waffles. Matthew was pretty sure the waffles would be a self-serving gesture. He cut up a fruit salad.
When Nicole stumbled into the kitchen and saw them, she smiled. “You don't know how good it is not to be heading down to a crappy breakfast buffet.”
Olivia left her waffle station long enough to give her mom a hug. “I'd love to live in a hotel. Like Eloise.”
“Eloise wasn't at a Best Western,” Nicole said. Matthew handed her a cup of coffee and she took a seat at the breakfast table. “What's been going on around here?”
Olivia breathlessly cataloged the events of the past weeks, culminating in the story about giving a cupcake to the man she thought was homelessâ“Only he wasn't, he just looked it”âand standing up to Leesburg's finest on his behalf. “And now the cake lady says I can ride Harvey any time I want. Harvey's her horse.”
The silence that followed bristled with Nicole's we-are-not-pleased vibes.
“I've got an idea for my birthday,” Olivia said. “I could have a horse party.”
“It's a little late for that, isn't it? I mean, that's a lot to arrange.” Nicole flicked a glance at Matthew. “For one thing, we'd need to come up with twelve horses in two weeks.”
“I bet Becca could help,” Olivia said.
Nicole blinked. “Becca?”
“The cake lady,” Matthew and Olivia explained in unison.
“Oh right.” Nicole stared thoughtfully at her empty plate. “Well . . . I'll think about it.”
Olivia looked as if she might drop the batter ladle. “You will?”
Matthew was stunned, too.
Nicole smiled as if their surprise was coming out of left field. “Let me have a few cups of coffee before I commit to anything, but I don't see why the idea should be off the table.”
Maybe because it went against every opinion she'd ever stated on the subject? Matthew wondered what had happened to make her consider changing her mind.
Showing incredible restraint, Olivia didn't beg or wheedle. Probably she knew better than to push her luck. “Are you going to be back for Career Day at school?” she asked, already moving on to the next thing.
“When is it?” Nicole asked.
“The Wednesday after my birthday.”
“Oh. I should be,” Nicole said. “I think we'll finish up somewhere around then.”
That
somewhere
didn't escape Matthew.
“Can I sign you up to talk? I could get my class contribution over with for the year.”
“Your what?” Matthew asked.
“Everybody has to either bring a show-and-tell, or give a talk about vacation or a favorite book or something, or bring someone to Fall Career Day or Spring Career Day.”
Matthew laughed. “So a kid can either bring his pet turtle or his mother and they both count for the same?”
“Turtles are really interesting,” Olivia said. “More interesting than some people's parents, for sure. I wish I could have one.”
Nicole lifted her hands. “Please. No reptiles. I'll be glad to show up myself and do a short presentation.” She spooned some fruit salad onto her plate. “And on the off chance that I can't make it, Matthew could substitute for me. He might be as entertaining as a turtle.”
Olivia's brow crinkled. “Matthew?”
He took a deep breath. “Don't worry, Olivia. My talk about writing economic impact studies always knocks 'em cold.”
He was a little confused as to why he might have to substitute for Nicole, though. If she was going to be back for the birthday party, surely the Career Day afterward wasn't in question. And why had she opened the door to a birthday party at a stable? When he and Nicole were clearing up the breakfast things, he took advantage of Olivia's not being within earshot to ask.
“I thought you were dead-set against horses,” he reminded her.
Nicole sighed. “I really don't know about Olivia. Why couldn't she be like every other kid in the world and want a cat or dog?”
“I'm sure she wouldn't turn one down if you wanted to give her one.”
“Well, I don't, particularly. At least horses don't shed all over the house.”
“It's not that crazy a wish. Lots of kids want to learn to ride, especially around here. Raising a girl in horse country and telling them they can't ride is a little like raising a kid by the ocean and telling them they shouldn't swim.”
“I guess you're right,” Nicole said. “I was hoping the mania would fade, but it obviously won't.”
Was she actually relenting?
Nicole rinsed a cup in the sink and handed it to him to transfer to the dishwasher. “It's not just that I'm tired of rehashing the horse argument for the umpty-millionth time. The way things are going out in Oregon, maybe the timing isn't that bad to give Olivia a treat. Absentee mom guilt is wearing me down.”
He frowned. “Did something go wrong with the test?”
Her groan said it all, but she added, “It's a train wreck. There's no way I'll be finished out there in a week, or even probably two weeks. In fact, by the time Olivia's birthday rolls around, I might be stuck in Hawaii.”
His brain scrambled to keep up. First, she'd never mentioned the possibility of the test site moving to Hawaii. Second, who in their right mind would ever feel
stuck
in Hawaii? “You're going to Hawaii? When?”
“Next week,” she said.
“You and Bob?”
“Of course. He's the lead engineer.”
“I know . . . but both of you need to go? And why Hawaii?”
“Some of the equipment isn't functioning well. It's a little hard to explain to a layman, but we need to investigate how the hydrofoils respond under different wave velocity conditions, and confer about partnering with a company that has another project underway in Hawaii.”
“Couldn't you just Skype?” he blurted out.
“Sure,” she shot back. “I could just call in while everybody else is on site doing all the work.”
“I'm sorry,” he said. “Dumb suggestion.”
“Look, if taking care of Olivia's too much for you, I guess I could send her to my mom's for a few weeks. I just hated to take her out of school in the middle of the semester. But if it's too much trouble . . .”
“No,” he said quickly, ashamed to have sounded reluctant, or impatient. “I'm happy to stay here a few more weeks. As long as it takes. I'm sort of getting the single dad routine down, actually.”
She shook her head. “I'll call Mom.”
“Honestly, Nicoleâit's no problem.”
“Is your boss hassling you about not being in your office all the time?”
“No, of course not,” he said. “On paper, at least, the Feds are supposed to encourage telecommuting and flextime.”
“You don't have to work from home so much. I could get Olivia back in at the Y after school.”
“She says she hates it there, and I don't like the idea of being so far away in case something comes up with her during the day. It's no problem.”
Nicole nodded. “Lucky thing your job's low-pressure enough that it doesn't matter so much.”
He frowned at her dismissive toneâit was almost the same one Olivia had used when she'd called him the babysitter. Okay, he wasn't doing innovative research that had the potential to save the planet, but still . . .
“So why all the concern about my going to Hawaii?” she asked.
Did she really need it spelled out? “I miss you.”
She grasped his hand. “Awâthat's a sweet thing to say.” Letting go, she added, “Believe me, I'll be back as soon as I can. But in the meantime, do you think you could manage a birthday party with twelve eleven-year-olds?”
He gulped. “You mean, arrange the party?”
“Yeah. And you might need to oversee it, if I can't get back in time. In fact, maybe you should just plan on that.”
“Okay, butâ”
“You're good at research stuff. Or maybe . . . maybe you could talk to the cake lady? You seem to have an in there, and she's got that horse Olivia's always talking about. She might be able to steer us toward a whatchacallit.”
“Stable?” Olivia was going to be ecstatic.
“Do you think she could give you some guidance?” Nicole asked.
“Probably.”
“Good. Ask her.” She let out a sigh. “At least if Olivia is going to get involved with horsey types, it will be with celebrity-caliber people and not just the typical local yokels.”
He drew back in confusion. “Celebrity?”
Nicole laughed. “Don't tell me you didn't know that the cake lady is our local celeb.”
Becca?
“The woman who owns the Strawberry Cake Shop?”
“You've lived in Leesburg six months and you haven't heard this? They even wrote her up in the paper once. She used to be on some sitcom.
Me Minus You.
It was such a dumb showâI never missed an episode when I was ten. Didn't you recognize her? Rebecca Hudson.”
Rebecca Hudson. It was one of those second-tier celebrity names that got burned into your brain without your knowing quite how. But suddenly, it all made sense. “I thought I had met her before or something,” he said. “It was driving me crazy.”
“Talk to her and see what she says. Or just comb the Internet. If you hook up with anyplace where a party's doable on such short notice, go for it. We can spring it on Olivia.”
“Don't you want to let her know what's going on now?”
“Oh God, no. If we told her what we were up to, we'd never hear the end of it. I was hoping to rest this weekend, not be dragged around to horse barns.”
“I'll see what I can do.”
“I certainly don't expect you to stick around here all weekend,” she told him. “This is your chance to rest, too. You probably haven't been in your place much these past few weeks.”
“I haven't missed it.” Nicole's house had begun to seem more like home than his empty town house.
But he caught her drift. Nicole had been living in hotels and surrounded by work and coworkers. She probably craved some quiet alone time with Olivia.
On the way back to his place, he thought about Becca. Rebecca Hudson. He hadn't really watched
Me Minus You
unless someone else in his family just happened to be looking at it. He had vague memories of sitting through it with his sisters. But that evidently had been enough to make her seem familiar to him. It wasn't some kind of special connection between himself and Becca, then. It was just the same connection everyone between the ages of twenty and forty probably felt toward her. Nothing special at all.
When he stopped the car, he looked around him in confusion. He'd thought he was driving to his place. Instead, he was parked right in front of the Strawberry Cake Shop.
He'd intended to wait till later in the afternoon to talk to her, but since he was here . . .
It was still early, and there weren't any people around. In fact, they weren't even quite open yet. When Matthew peered through the door, the older guy, Walt, appeared, broom in hand, unlocked the door, and beckoned him in.
“We got a visitor,” he called out to Becca.
She hurried over, wearing a Strawberry Cake Shop bib apron over a long-sleeved T-shirt and jeans.
“She doesn't like early birds,” her doorkeeper said, “but we'll make an exception for you or Olivia.”
While Walt went back to sweeping, Matthew quickly explained his party dilemma to Becca. As he spoke, it occurred to him how little he knew about arranging a tween birthday party, horses, and hosting parties in general. As he wound up by telling her that this all needed to happen two weeks from today, he was already gearing up for her to say that there was no way. Her lips were pursed into a frown.
“Maybe I shouldn't be bugging you about this?” he asked in conclusion. “I just thought since you have a horse, you might know of a stable with the facilities for something like this. . . .”
“Oh, I know just the place,” she assured him. “I can probably get you a good rate, too. The barn where I keep Harvey would be perfect, and I have an in with the owner.”
“Great.” So why did she look so doubtful?
“It's the timing that could be a problem,” she said, reading his mind. “I'll have to check with the owner to see if the stable is available that day, and if he can get everything set up. You'll need to get parents to sign releases. . . .”
“You mean, legal papers?”
“Riding isn't necessarily dangerous, but horses are animals, and unpredictable. Accidents happen. Parents have to know that, and be able to accept it.”
“Okay. That makes sense.” He thought of Nicole. She would probably be the person who would have the hardest time signing a release.
“Also, the parents have to be advised to dress the kids in appropriate clothes. They don't have to show up in paddock boots and jodhpurs, but party dresses won't work, either.”
“Olivia's not really a party dress kind of girl,” he said.
She nodded.
“Excuse me.” Walt shuffled forward. “I shouldn't be eavesdropping, but I was. I'd like to pay for Olivia's birthday cake. You can take it out of my pay, Rebecca.”
“Becca,” she corrected him automatically.